The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle (11 page)

‘Luca!’

He said nothing.

‘Why?’ Amy asked with deceptive softness. ‘Why did you hate him so much? What did your father ever do to deserve that?’

‘He was never a father to me.’ Luke spoke just as quietly and he glanced swiftly around, but there was nobody to overhear. Nevertheless, this was a conversation that should be private. His office? The on-call room right beside them?

But Amy wasn’t going anywhere. She planted her hands on her hips and glared up at him.

‘And whose choice was that? You wouldn’t let him be a father to you, would you? You refused to see him. Did he know that? Had he had to pretend to his family that you had died so he didn’t have to admit to the shame of having a son who didn’t want anything to do with him?’

‘No! It wasn’t like that. It was him who wanted nothing to do with me. Or so I thought. I grew up believing he didn’t care.’

‘Pfff!’ The sound was outraged. ‘It very nearly destroyed him,
Luca
!’

He wished she wouldn’t say his name like that. He
wasn’t
Luca. Hadn’t been since before he could remember.

‘He loved you.
So
much. As much as he loved your mother.’ Amy sucked in a breath. ‘Why did you steal the photograph?’

‘I…ah…’ God, she was mesmerising. Her face alight with the intensity of her emotions. Her eyes flashing sparks of fury.

‘You destroyed it, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re planning to. Just like you’re planning to destroy his house.’

Luke couldn’t deny it.

‘You don’t want to believe he loved you. That he would have died for you. That all he ever wanted was a chance to love you.’

‘Listen to me,’ Luke snarled. He put his hands on Amy’s shoulders and turned her so that her back was against the wall. So she would have to look up and listen. ‘I never knew he came looking for me. My grandmother thought she was protecting me. She told Giovanni his son had died. I grew up believing he didn’t care and…yes, I hated him and that
was
the reason I wanted to get rid of the house, but now…’

‘Now?’

‘Now I’m not sure. I need time to figure out what to do. What it is I…want…’ Luke’s words trailed away. He’d got carried away with what he was saying. So carried away he’d actually forgotten it was possible that someone coming along the corridor could overhear and that his most private life could become a subject of gossip. Or observe him with his hands on a female colleague. Leaning towards her, for all the world as though he was about to kiss her.

Worst of all, he didn’t give a damn.

Because he knew what he wanted. He was touching it and his hands were burning.

‘Luca?’ The word was a whisper and Amy’s gaze clung to his. Her lips were slightly parted and the flush of anger sill tinged her cheeks. ‘What
do
you want?’

Luke reached down beside Amy. To turn the handle of the door and push it open. He turned Amy’s shoulder with his other hand and drew her into the privacy of the on-call bedroom.

‘You,’ he said, his voice raw. ‘God help me, Amy. I want
you
.’

Amy was, quite literally, being swept off her feet.

Into a small room that Luke’s presence filled with an overpowering force, even before he closed and locked the door behind them.

An outside window with curtains that were only half-drawn allowed light to filter in from the outside world. Just enough to give form to the force overpowering every one of Amy’s other senses.

Not that she really needed to see Luke. She could feel him with every cell of her body. Smell his maleness and his arousal. Breathe him in along with the air she managed to snatch before his lips claimed hers with a hunger that could have been frightening.

Except it wasn’t because her own hunger matched his. Her lips were parted before contact was made and her tongue tangled with Luke’s before she gave in with a groan of need and allowed his to penetrate her mouth unhindered. The shaft of desire it sparked was so intense she groaned again, helping Luke as he rucked up her skirt, gripped her hips and pulled her against his hardness that the thin cotton of his scrub pants did nothing to restrict.

Thin layers of cotton and silk were the only barriers to the penetration her body was desperate for, and Amy couldn’t wait. She slid her hands beneath Luke’s tunic top to feel the smooth skin of his back and then her hands moved down and it was so easy to slip them beneath the elastic of the loose pants and delight in taking hold of buttocks that felt like silk-covered steel.

Luke echoed her own sounds of need and Amy’s feet left the floor again as she was lifted and placed on the narrow bed. Not that she noticed the size of the bed. Or even the room. Luke filled the space. The room
was
Luke.

Her blouse lost at least one button and her bra was unfastened but not removed. Luke simply pushed it aside as his hands cupped her breasts. Then his lips and tongue replaced the brush of his fingers and Amy cried out softly as she felt the graze of his teeth against nipples that had never been this sensitive.

Clothes were a nuisance, bunched and clinging, but the luxury of getting naked was going to take too much time for either of them so they dragged them aside only as much as absolutely necessary and ignored the discomfort. They were unaware of it in the throes of physical passion, the likes of which Amy had certainly never experienced.

It was crazy. White-hot lust that carried her to the brink of insanity and then exploded. It wasn’t until well after Luke had shuddered in her arms in the wake of his own climax and then slowly—heartbeat by heartbeat—relaxed against her that Amy could start thinking again.

Not that she wanted to think of anything other than the sensation of lying in Luke’s arms like this. The patches of their skin that were naked still in contact. His breath, ragged against the side of her neck. His hands still holding her as though they never wanted to let her go. Her own arms were around him.

Holding
him
.

An embrace that was so tender it was heart-breaking.

She should say something, but what?

That was amazing?

I never knew sex could be that good?

I love you, Luca?

What would he say to that? That he wasn’t Luca, he was Luke? A Harrington? That while the sex had certainly been good, this was a relationship that could never go any further?

Safer to remain silent and not risk hearing something that could destroy what was still the most magic moment of Amy’s life.

One that had, beyond any other, taken her breath away.

In the end, the transformation from Luca to Luke happened rapidly thanks to the strident sound of his pager coming from somewhere on the floor. Amy could feel the way reality came between them, breaking the connection. Making every muscle in Luke’s body tense as he reached for the phone on the beside table.

‘Harrington.’

He listened for less than a minute. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said.

He turned back to Amy. ‘The EEG on the child in Glasgow was negative. The parents have signed donor-consent forms. Summer’s heart’s on the way.’

W
HAT
had he done?

For the next hour, Luke had no time to think about anything other than the logistics of bringing a donor heart to a dying child. Co-ordinating the harvest surgery in Glasgow, the helicopter that would rush it to London and his own part in the procedure—starting the surgery on Summer and getting her onto a heart-lung bypass machine, trimming and preparing the donor heart as soon as it arrived and then removing Summer’s heart, matching the excision as exactly as possible to the same shape as the donor organ.

To create a perfect match.

This had to work because it would save Summer’s life and…for the first time, Luke’s motivation had a new edge. That he was doing this for Amy, as well as Summer, could not be dismissed as irrelevant.

It was a gift that would bring tears of joy to her eyes. An amazing gift that Luke was capable of bestowing, and Amy would love it.

Would she love
him
for giving it?

A respite in organisation came when everything was set up. The surgery would start in Glasgow and a phone line was being kept open, linking the theatres. When the donor heart was removed and pronounced viable, the clock would start ticking in London and Summer would move into Theatre and go under the anaesthetic. She was already in the anteroom and under mild sedation but the small girl did not seem at all frightened.

Why would she be?

She lay cuddled in Amy’s arms and Luke knew exactly how that felt. How much was being given. And that was when the enormity of what had happened in the on-call room hit home.

Luke had never been cuddled. His grandmother loved him, he knew that, but she wasn’t capable of being physically demonstrative. Maybe she never had been. Maybe that had contributed to his mother falling in love with someone who could show her how important that kind of comfort was. His own parents had certainly been comfortable with close contact. He could tell that from that photograph he had looked at many times since he had stolen it.

So he had known love through touch and then it had been wrenched from his life and he hadn’t experienced it again.

Until now.

He wasn’t a virgin. Far from it. But he’d never, ever felt threatened by sex.

Afraid.

Afraid he’d found something he’d been looking for his entire life because, having found it, he would have to live with the fear—no, the
knowledge
—that it could be wrenched away from him.

No. His heart told him he could trust Amy. With his life.

He could hear her reassuring Summer.

‘Everything’s fine,
cara
. It’s going to be all right. I’m taking care of you. I’m taking care of everything.’

Everything?

What did that mean?

Oh…Yes…

Luke’s brain dredged up what was ringing the alarm bell and his head had always won over anything his heart had to say. Good and bad. That’s why he had learned to listen and follow what it said. Rational thinking over emotion. His head had something very different to his heart to say right now.

You can’t trust it,
it said.
Remember!

Remember what?

Remember what she said.

What did she say?

She’d do anything to save that damned house. To keep it for her family.
Anything!
And she just said it again, didn’t she? She’s taking care of everything.

She might have meant the operation. The other children. Christmas.

No. She had sex with you because she wants something.

Me. She wants me the same way I want her.

No. She wants the house. That’s all. Remember? She’d do
anything!

It was true. He’d looked at her in his office and the desire to hold her and kiss her had been overwhelming, and she’d said she’d do anything and his body had screamed the question—
even this?

And her eyes had given him the answer.
Yes.
Especially this.

She may have wanted it as much as he had, but had that been because she was prepared to do anything to save her home and he’d just gone along with it? His grandmother had been horrified that he was kissing Amy in his office. How shocked would she be to know he’d had sex with her in the on-call bedroom? Good grief, what if
that
hit the grapevine? His reputation would be ruined. Amy could blackmail him with that if she was so inclined. The thought sent a chill down his spine. He could not allow that to happen.

He could make sure it didn’t. She could
have
the damned house. He’d hand it to her on a plate and see if that made a difference. He’d be able to tell. Her face. Those eyes—they were so incredibly expressive. If the house was all she’d wanted, he’d see satisfaction for payment of services rendered. Victory would be written there for him to read.

And if he saw something else?

There was no time to contemplate that scenario.

‘The Eastern Infirmary’s called through,’ a nurse relayed. ‘Heart’s good. It’s being chilled and packed now and the helicopter is standing by on the roof.’

‘Code green, then.’ Luke simply nodded at the anaesthetist, any personal thoughts banished instantly. ‘You start while I’m scrubbing.’

He had to ignore the flash of fear in Amy’s eyes. The way she used both her hands to stroke the child’s face as she bent down for a final kiss.

‘It’s all right,
cara
,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll be here when you wake up. Everything’s going to be fine.’

The surgery was going to take hours. Rather than wait and pace outside Theatre, Amy chose to go home. While Zoe was happy to babysit and Robert proud to help, they were still both too young to have complete responsibility for the others, especially two lively six-year-old twins.

Part of Amy wanted nothing more than to stay and keep vigil and she was missing her mother and sister more right now than ever, but that was another reason to leave for a while. She needed to call them and tell them about this new, potentially miraculous development in Summer’s life.

She would also need to answer the questions and give information that Marcella would demand to know even if she couldn’t understand it. Amy rehearsed how she might explain the procedure in simple terms as she hurried home through the icy, dark evening, her mobile phone clutched in her hand in case her friend who worked in Recovery texted her with any news of progress in Theatre 3. Summer’s theatre.

She took the time to reassure all the children and admire the newly decorated tree. Chantelle was beaming.

‘Robert said we’d keep my paper streamers, as well, ’cos they’re really cool.’

The look Robert exchanged with Amy was so full of adult comprehension and caring that she had to give him a hug. He stood there a bit stiffly and didn’t return the affectionate gesture, but she could tell he liked it by how gruff his voice was.

‘I’ll get the twins to bed,’ he said. ‘Come on, you lot. It’s getting late and it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. If you’re not good, you won’t get presents.’

‘We’re good,’ Angelo insisted, chasing Marco to catch up with Robert. ‘Aren’t we, Roberto?’

‘Sometimes,’ he conceded. ‘Come on. Scoot!’

The twins scooted. Amy put some fuel onto the drawing-room fire near the tree and tucked the guard securely into place. She patted Monty, who was lying on the hearth rug with Kyra, Chantelle and Andrew, and then she took another moment to admire the tree. She would have to remember to bank the fire again tomorrow night when she tiptoed in with the gifts currently in hiding under Uncle Vanni’s bed. With the room warm and the tree looking so festive, Christmas morning was going to be something to look forward to.

Especially if they had good news about Summer to celebrate.

It was more than time to let Summer’s official foster-mother know what was going on.

‘How do they do it?’ Marcella fretted. ‘How can they do it in time? What happens when they take the old heart out? Is there just nothing there? An empty chest?
Dio mio
, but what happens to all the blood?’

‘There’s no blood,’ Amy assured her. ‘There’s a special machine and all the blood goes through that. It gets oxygenated and goes to and from the rest of the body but leaves the heart out of the loop. There’s special tubes—like a roadworks diversion.’

‘So there
is
just an empty chest?
Oh
…Oh, my poor little angel! How do they do it, Amy? How do they put the new heart in exactly the right place?’

‘It’s actually quite straightforward,’ Amy told her. ‘Honestly! It takes ages because they have to stitch everything into place very carefully but it’s a matter of joining up all the arteries and veins.’

It was too much information for Marcella. She needed to go and call on every saint she could think of to look after her ‘angel’. Rosa wanted to know, however.

‘So how do they join them? Like darning them on from the outside?’

‘No. They cut the donor heart open and the first thing they do is stitch the pulmonary vein and arteries into place. They’re the ones that take blood from the heart to the lungs and then back to the heart again. They have to join in the aorta which is the big vessel that takes blood to the rest of the body, and the big veins that bring the blood back to the heart again.’

‘Isn’t there a danger of things leaking?’

‘The stitches are microscopic—that’s why it takes so long. And they use a special glue stuff on the suture lines, as well. It’s not likely that there’ll be a leak but they have all sorts of special catheters in place afterwards and can measure exact pressures in the heart so they know if there is a problem and it’s easy enough to go back in and fix it.’

‘Does the new heart just start by itself? When it gets blood inside it?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘What do they do if it doesn’t start by itself?’

‘They have a special defibrillator that can be used right on the heart. Tiny little paddles that only give a very small shock.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Hours. I’ll call or text any news I get.’

‘OK. You take care of yourself, too, Amy. Make sure you get some rest. Oh, Mamma wants to talk to you ag—’

The phone seemed to have been wrenched from her sister’s hand. ‘Amy? Will it work?’ Marcella demanded tearfully. ‘Will my little
angelo
get through this? I can’t believe I’m not there to be beside her bed. To pray for her.’

‘I know. I’m sorry, Mamma. I want you to be here, too, but this was a gift that couldn’t wait and it might not happen again.’

‘Why aren’t
you
there?’

‘I came home for a bit just to check everything was all right. And it is. Zoe’s being a star and you won’t believe how much Robert’s grown up while you’ve been away. He really is the man of the house at the moment, Mamma. You’ll be so proud of him.’

She could hear Rosa making soothing noises and then her sister took the phone back.

‘It’s OK, I’ll look after her. Are you going back to the hospital now?’

‘Very soon. I’ll be there for her when she comes out of Theatre.’

‘Will she wake up then?’

‘No. I think they keep them well sedated for a day or two. On life support. Tell Mamma it’s quite possible
she’ll
be able to be with Summer when she does wake up.’

It was nearly dawn on Christmas Eve when Summer left the recovery area and was taken back to isolation in the intensive care unit, almost invisible in the midst of the bank of life-support machinery. She was on a ventilator, calibrated bottles hung from her bed for chest and urine drainage and tubes snaked into her skin in various places, allowing administration of drugs and monitoring of her blood pressures and oxygen levels. Electrodes were in place for continuous monitoring of the rhythm of her new heart.

Emergency gear cluttered trolleys. Equipment for suction, dressings, a pacemaker if it was needed and a defibrillator for a worst-case scenario of cardiac arrest. There were people everywhere. Gowned and masked in accordance with isolation protocols that would protect Summer from infection. Her cardiologist and her surgeon and his registrar. The ICU consultant and her registrars. Nurses and technicians.

And Amy, though not for long.

It was overwhelming. Both the level of care Summer would need for the next twenty-four hours or so and the fact that the procedure had been pronounced successful. Textbook perfect, in fact.

Summer had a new heart. It was quite possible she was going to live for a long time. Long enough to experience all the joys life could offer because she would be able to do all the things that normal, healthy children took for granted. To run and play. To go to school. To look forward to her birthdays and Christmases to come.

On top of the anxiety for the period of recovery, gratitude that a donor organ had become available and relief that the surgery had gone so well, Amy hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours and had only had a restless few hours before that.

And, just to top that off, she had experienced the most emotional, intense love-making she had ever known, because she had been with the man she loved.

And would love, for the rest of her life.

It was all too much and if Amy didn’t get home and sleep for a few hours, she would simply collapse. She had already rung Marcella and Rosa and given them the good news. She would tell the other children when they woke up, which hopefully wouldn’t be for a little while. If she let Marco and Angelo climb into bed with her for a cuddle, she might get an extra hour’s rest.

There would be time after that to thank Luke. It was far too soon to contemplate saying anything more. Hinting about how she felt, for example. She had done that with her body, in any case. Now she had to wait to see if the message was one that would be welcomed.

Until then, she couldn’t afford to think any further ahead. She wouldn’t begin to worry about the disparity of their backgrounds or the way they viewed life or the huge obstacle Luke’s grandmother represented.

Thanking him was enough for now.